SOURCE: TIMESONLINE
September 11, 2005
September 11, 2005
Teen Queen
The OC star Mischa Barton is destined to become television’s biggest fashion icon since Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, says Nick DeCosemo
Sitting in the back of a speeding Mercedes on the way to a night out with friends in Rome, Mischa Barton is musing on the nature of global celebrity. She has just finished shooting scenes for her new film at a 13th-century castle in Tuscany, and the drawbridge has been besieged all day by a gang of Italian kids desperate for her autograph. “It’s strange how popular a show like The OC can be in all these different countries,” she says, with what seems like genuine amazement.
“I get a lot of kids coming up and shouting, ‘Hey, it’s Marissa from The OC,’ in some of the strangest places.”
At 19, Barton is enjoying the kind of international fame that other stars spend their entire lives trying to achieve. The OC, for anyone who has taken their eye off the ball in the past couple of years, is a frothy television series about a privileged bunch of Californian teenagers. Barton plays Marissa Cooper, a troubled and slightly flaky prom queen with a killer wardrobe, who gradually turns to drink, lesbianism and murder.
Barton isn’t actually Marissa, of course, even if the perfect lips, oversized blue eyes and wavy brown-blonde hair endow her with a similar all-American, frat-house fantasy look. Yes, there have been the usual starlet rumours of eating disorders (“I’ve always had to struggle with that. I’m naturally thin, built a certain way”) and underage drinking (she is 19; the legal age in California is 21). Her parents’ disapproval of her on-off relationship with Brandon Davis, 24, a Hilfiger model, oil heir and friend of the Hilton sisters, has done nothing to silence those who say that she has started enjoying the LA lifestyle just a little too much.
But for all that, Barton is a home girl at heart. Born in London, she was brought up in New York by her British stockbroker father and Irish mother, with whom she now lives in LA for much of the year. “I go to my mum for approval on everything style-related,” she says. “She grew up in London in the 1960s, and she is pretty cool. She knows what looks good. I think she is the reason why I favour the retro look.”
And it is Barton’s various looks that have got her noticed. The OC — about to start a third series — is as much a marker of the fashion zeitgeist as Sex and the City was at its peak. The OC fan site even lists the labels characters wear in each episode. “We weren’t aiming to be trendy at first,” says Barton. “We were just trying to show that whole Newport Beach scene, of Juicy sweat pants mixed with couture clothing, and it turned out to be a pop-culture thing.” Now, what The OC wears, the American viewing public buys.
Yet, among a cast of household names, it is Barton alone who has emerged as America’s new It girl, a sort of Sarah Jessica Parker for the teen and twentysomething generation. In fashion terms, she is the full package: the face, the body and the legions of adoring fans who want to dress just like her. And as Carrie Bradshaw boosted sales of Manolos, so Marissa has worked wonders for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Missoni. Barton, meanwhile, has appeared on the cover of American Elle, Cosmo and Allure, and scooped advertising contracts with Neutrogena and the US trainer brand Keds. She is, in short, a commercial gold mine. “The OC is fast becoming a fashion adjective,” says Giorgio Armani, who dressed Barton for the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas last December. “Now, Mischa is a red-carpet, front-row girl in every way.”
Barton possesses a more natural style off-screen than on, and has a firmer grip on the basic rules than some of her showbiz contemporaries. As the American fashion stylist Rachel Zoe puts it: “She looks like a model, but she doesn’t take it too seriously. When someone is new in Hollywood, they tend to struggle with their fashion identity, not knowing whether to dress up or down, but Mischa knew exactly where she should be.”
Barton even professes, in a very “now” way, to hate shopping. “Mixing and matching is really important, like blending designer and vintage,” she says. “What I really hate is head-to-toe logos, and everything that shows too much skin.” She turned up at last year’s Teen People’s Young Hollywood party wearing skinny jeans and a loose knitted Missoni-style tank top, prompting one commentator to describe her as an “Orange County Kate Moss ”.
She says her favourite designers are Chanel “because it’s classic”, Roland Mouret, Alexander McQueen and Costume National, as well as Matthew Williamson, who dressed her for the Golden Globes earlier this year. Williamson has praised what he calls her “no-attitude approach to fashion. She’s having a great time with fashion, and she’s prepared to stand out, which is refreshing”. Just as refreshing is the fact that Barton comes without the trashy baggage that cheapens other pop-culture icons: Paris Hilton, say, or Jessica Simpson. Nobody could accuse her of being a flash in the pan: she was performing off-Broadway aged nine, and at 11 starred in the acclaimed film Lawn Dogs — which had critics hailing her as the acting discovery of the year. After small roles in The Sixth Sense and Notting Hill — and the big break in The OC — she is now cementing her big-screen credentials with a part in Decameron: Angels & Virgins, a film based on the work of the medieval writer Boccaccio. So this fashion thing — it’s only a bit of fun? “I like it,” she says, “because it’s another way of expressing yourself. Then again, I don’t put a lot of effort into it, so I would hate to think that anybody’s really scrutinising what outfit I wear. Lord knows, it’s going to change next week.”
Last edited by a moderator:
She does have her own style, IMO. And I like it too 
. I just hate how most celebrities are 'style/fashion icons' these days
.......
